Nintendo is finally admitting that at least on launch day availability for the Wii U is going to be tight, but Nintendo claims that retailers will get “regular stock deliveries” on the run up to Christmas.

Our sources tell us that Nintendo will not be able to deliver enough Wii U consoles to satisfy the demand and supplies, and the run up to Christmas will be tighter than Nintendo is willing to admit. Nintendo claims they want to meet the demand; but we think that similar to the Wii, they will be in no real hurry to do so.

Retailers that we have spoken with tell us that their distribution channels are already telling them that for at least the present it is not clear how many units they are going to get. Some distributors are advising retailers to be careful on how many pre-orders for the Wii U they accept.

One independent retailer who has six stores confirmed to us that they have elected not to accept any pre-orders for the Wii U. “I have told my store managers that we are not going to go through again what we went through with the Wii. We are not in the business of disappointing people, and while we will stock the software and do what we can on consoles, we are not going to accept pre-orders or deposits for them,” according to the retailer.

In another interesting note, it has come to light that Nintendo has apparently admitted that they will be losing money on the Wii U console out of the gate. While it isn’t clear how much Nintendo is losing on each Wii U console, the news does not surprise us. We suspect, however, that given the configuration and parts that make up the Wii U the company isn’t losing as much as you might think on each console. We do think it will be a long time before Nintendo is willing to drop the price of the unit despite the impact of significant sales.